This invention relates generally to an improved process for making animated motion pictures and the like. More particularly, this invention relates to an improved process for rapidly and economically producing individual animation or cartoon cells of improved quality which may be assembled to form an animation scene.
Early animated motion pictures, referred to commonly as cartoons, originated from a succession of outline sketches of animated characters drawn on paper to depict sequences of character movement. Each outline sketch was traced using ink or pencil onto a transparent sheet of celluloid acetate, commonly referred to as a "cell" to produce a so-called cartoon cell which was then back-up on the reverse side with selected paint, shading, highlighting, and the like to complete the animated character or characters in a single position of movement. Several of these cells were then assembled in stacked registration to produce a composited animation scene which was photographed to provide, for example, a single frame of an animated motion picture. This process, however, undesirably required many hours of skilled hand labor particularly with respect to the step of tracing an artist's paper sketches onto the individual transparent cells, thereby making production of animated motion pictures relatively costly. Moreover, the completed animation or cartoon cells were relatively fragile and damaged easily during handling, for example, by peeling or chipping of paint or by sharp bending of the transparent acetate sheet. Replacements for damaged cells could be obtained only by costly retracing of the original paper sketch onto a fresh transparent acetate sheet.
In more recent years, hand tracing of original paper sketches onto transparent cells has been largely superseded by a so-called photocopy process. In the photocopy process, an original outline character sketch on paper is individually photocopied directly onto a transparent cell of celluoid acetate or the like, after which the cell is backed-up with paint and composited with other similarly produced cells to form an animation scene. This photocopy process constituted a major advance in the animation industry by eliminating hand tracing and furthermore by producing a truer replica of the artist's original sketch directly onto the transparent cell. However, the character image formed on the transparent cell is defined by tiny ridges of electromagnetically deposited carbon powder which has been found to chip relatively easily from the cell surface resulting in smudging which appears in the animation scene as unwanted dark spots or regions. Moreover, the photocopy process inherently deposits onto the cell a significant amount of background clutter consisting of random spots and occasional faint lines which must be removed by manual erasure to avoid dark spots in the animation scene. Still further, when the photocopy process is used, the original paper sketch is limited to an outline depiction and cannot include extensive dark or shaded regions which generally cannot be photocopied without undesirable variation in density.
There exists, therefore, a significant need for an improved process for transferring an animation sketch onto a transparent cell without requiring deposition of line-forming material onto the cell and further without requiring manual erasure of significant background clutter. The present invention fulfills these needs and provides further related advantages.